utenzi

In my title I'm referring to the watermelon below but it could, I guess, refer to me also. I went to see my doctor today. Scheduled appointment, nothing serious. And she told me to lose some more weight! I'd already dropped 45 pounds to get to 183 which is the upper threshold for a normal BMI at my height. But apparently she wants me to be near the middle of the weight range for "normal." Jeeze. Pretty soon I'll look all dessicated like that poor watermelon over there. At least the bugs like it now.

Today didn't start out as a bad day outside. But I was too sore to take advantage of that. By the time my disintegrating body was able to get out of the house it was after 2pm. Bad start. My first stop was work where I needed to give some mice the attention that they so desperately desire (actually a recent poll of mice discovered that they would prefer to be left alone---but keep delivering the food). My lab work didn't take very long and I was back on the road by 3:30pm. The thing is, I don't like to leave the house on weekends. So this having to work weekends gig that I've been doing on and off for the past 8 months has, in a way, been a good thing. Cause I prefer to multitask once I'm out of the house. So I'll do the groceries, refill the gas tank, or maybe even force my aging body across one type of landscape or another. And my doctor recently pointed out that I could use a lot more exercise (ouch). Anyway, as a result of that advice and my being out of the...

I think I had a post by this title earlier but if so, it bears repeating. This time the diagnosis of old-ness is due to my ophthalmologist telling me that I now need bifocals. The trouble spot where I can't focus is pretty far out still but no doubt as I get older it'll get closer and closer. *sigh* The infirmities of age. I've been rather quiet of late due to working longer hours than usual and being sick with a cold. Yesterday I was doing surgeries on mice for over 3 hours and thought I was going to die near the end. Yes, I'm being dramatic but I really was getting desperate for something to drink near the end. The end! Having a sore throat isn't good when you can't de-glove for a few hours. On the Christmas front, I've still not bought a single present. It's getting close to crunch time! I wonder if it's permissible to just hand out IOUs? Addendum : several people here have suggested getting the progressive (no lines) type lenses for my glas...

Back on September 3rd I wrote a post in which I observed that I was getting old because I had to start taking a medication every day. Well, now there's a second entry in that nasty getting old category. Tuesday night, while watching Fringe , a commercial came on for a movie, Nights in Rodanthe , that is about to be released. While watching the commercial I thought to myself that the couple in the movie were very charismatic and well suited to one another. And I thought to myself that the lead actress was quite attractive despite her age---but I couldn't place her. As it turns out, it was Diane Lane , and her co-star is Richard Gere who's a very well preserved 59---16 years older she. Back in 1979 I saw her first movie, A Little Romance , when I was a freshman in college. I immediately had a huge crush on her. She was so pretty despite being only 14. Which, of course, makes her 4 years younger than I am. That phrase despite her age is coming back to haunt me. So if she...

My doctor's appointment on Tuesday morning launched me into my waning years, I'm afraid. Now I admit this isn't the official way to define the "golden stage" of life, but to me once you have to take a drug everyday you're old. Today I picked up some statins to control cholesterol and they have to be taken every day. But it could have happened sooner. My doctor wanted me to take high blood pressure meds a couple of months ago. I had to talk her into running a 24 hour BP monitor instead. Fortunately that test (it checked BP every 15 minutes for a total of nearly 100 datapoints across the 24 hours I had the monitor on--which is a lot more accurate than taking just one BP reading at the doctor's office) Today also marked the second time in recent weeks that people have peeked inside of me. Today it was an echo cardiogram. I was surprised at how much detail it showed. For the most part I was facing away from the screen but the last 5 or 6 minutes I could watch...

You're not getting any older--just your blood is. LOL The story is actually a lot more complicated than that but there's two articles in the August 10 issue of Science that indicate that the environment (ie blood) our cells are in is a lot more important vis a vis aging than the cells themselves. Further, that it's a protein referred to as wnt that is the big player in this. Wnt has long been known to be a very important regulatory protein. The name is derived from "wingless" and "integrative" and dates back to early genetic work on fruit flies on the wingless side and vertebrate studies on the integrative. As you can see to the left, the wnt pathway is complex. My research has dipped into the APC area quite a few times and one of the genes I'm working on right now is for a frizzled protein (the FRZ in the diagram) but I've never worked with wnt directly. Back to the Science article. Thomas Rando, MD, PhD, associate professor of neurology a...